Icarus

18 || IRL

They're hanging at Reggie's trailer and Reggie is lounging across the couch, his beautiful Fender Kingman in his arms as he finger-picks his way through a simple blues progression, the amp turned low and clean. He's idly working his way through Johnny B. Goode and Cross Road Blues while Tom talks.

"I didn't like that Enews article," Tom says, laying on the floor and staring up at the ceiling, "Should I come out again? Like, post it on social media this time so people stop assuming I'm straight?"

Reggie lets Tom's voice turn into a running counterpoint to the chords, and he starts picking out a rhythm that fits Tom's ramble, the two sounds dancing together in a strange sort of syncopation that has him smiling until Tom says his name like he's said it a few times before.

"What're you playing, darling?" he asks. He's leaning up on an elbow and looking at Reggie with a furrowed brow. "I thought I recognized it, but then you went all... whatever with it."

Regis' fingers have stilled on the strings, but he quickly gets back to it, strumming through the chords so the sound is clearer. "It's just the blues, babe. Nothing too fancy."

"I guess. Play it again?" Tom's eyes go a bit distant as Regis steps through the one, the four, the five, then back again. He throws a quick lick in, then modulates into the relative minor, and Tom laughs. "Yeah, nothing fancy."

Reggie grins. "Seriously, it's simple. C'mere," he says, without considering what it's going to do to his heart rate to have Tom join him on the bed. Tom doesn't seem to notice, though, and settles in next to Regis, close enough that their knees touch.

He passes his guitar over to Tom, who takes it with uncertain hands. 

"Just settle it in your lap, she's not gonna bite."

"I didn't expect how heavy it would be," Tom says as he gets situated, his left hand wrapped around the neck, his right resting on the body. "What do all of these knobs do?"

"Don't touch those," Regis says, "I've got the sound right for what we're doing. You can play around with them later, promise."

Tom nods, though it's evident he doesn't know what he's agreeing to.

Regis continues. "Okay, so, you've got your left hand on the fretboard, and all of those spaces between the metal bars? Those are the frets. They start at one at the top, and then they go up as you go down the neck. So" —Regis points as he counts—"fret one, two, three, four, and on and on. There's twenty-four on my girl, which means you can go up two octaves."

"I don't know what that is, love."

Reggie sighs, amused. "Didn't you have to take music at school?"

"I mean, yes, but, I hate to break it to you, but I didn't exactly pay attention."

Regis can see the glazed overwhelmed look in Tom's eyes grows the longer he tries to explain how to play, but he's still trying to process how good Tom looks with his hands slung around a guitar. Like they belong there.

"How about this?" Regis says when he can tell that Tom's about to run out of patience. "Let me just..."

He positions Tom's hand, then pushes down on his fingers when he goes to lift them off.

"No, keep them there. That's a G chord. Go ahead and strum."

Tom does, and it's rough and a bit buzzy, but when Regis pushes Tom's fingers harder against the strings, the chord rings out clean and clear.

"Okay, so that's your tonic, your root chord. That's the key we're in."

"Losing me again, Beaumont," Tom says, but he strums the chord a second time, his mouth turned into a reluctant smile.

Tom fumbles his way through an 8-bar blues with Regis guiding him. It takes him a couple of times through, but eventually his transitions smooth out, and he's playing a steady—if slow—blues.

"Well, shit," Tom says excitedly and immediately loses it. "Fucking hell. I had that. Right?"

"Yeah." Reggie is grinning so wide, it hurts. "Yeah, you did babe."

Tom stares down at the guitar and smiles, then passes it back to Regis. "It didn't sound like what you were doing, though."

"No." Regis settles the guitar in his lap with loving familiarity, then strums through Johnny real quick. "I was playing a different key, and the progression's a little different, but it was basically the same thing." He shrugs and then starts to play through a series of open chords he's been working on.

He sees Tom lean a little closer, so he starts to sing. He finishes the verse, then the chorus, and finishes with a quick flourish that has Regis' eyebrows going up and laughter spilling from his mouth like an arpeggio. 

"What's that?" Tom asks, his leg still pressed to Reggie's,

"Nothing. Just playing around."